Step and Repeat: Toile de Jouy Renaissance

Toile de Jouy, the eighteenth-century classic French fabric, is having a style revival—much to design enthusiasts’ delight. The “cloth from Jouy,” as it is simply translated, has been a conduit of decorative storytelling for centuries, often in the form of idyllic, pastoral landscapes of people in nature. Now the narrative pattern has been spotted on the runway, and contemporary designers and artists are reinventing the beloved fabric in modern and irreverent ways. Here, a round-up of some of our favorite new iterations.

Oscar de la Renta debuted several toile de Jouy patterns for his fall 2013 collection, using a traditional representation of the fabric, but modernizing it by playing with scale and repetition. For spring 2013 shows, Carven presented a safari toile that was classically rendered, while Ruffian’s soft pink–and-blue palette belied its thoroughly modern tableau of a Williamsburg, Brooklyn street scene.

Neue Galerie collaborated with artist Sara Nesbitt on Toile de Vienne fabric, an homage to the nineteenth-century Viennese beau monde, replete with iconic landmarks of the city—from the Secession Hall to Belvedere Palace. Nesbitt, who is fascinated by the “ambiguous spatial and subjective quality” of toile, uses the narrative template to explore issues in contemporary Western society in her fine arts, also shown.

A playful take on toile, Flavor Paper’s series of wallpapers reappropriate the pattern in Wythe Toile, which depicts particular Williamsburg visuals: the water towers, fixed speed bicycles, and other tongue-in-cheek references to the “hipster” neighborhood. The wallpaper company worked with Dan Funderburgh to develop it for the recently launched Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn. Dia di Dumbo, another Brooklyn-based Funderburgh design, is featured in money green.

Pierre Frey, France’s quintessential fabric house, took a modern departure from their more classic aesthetics with “Playtime,” designed by artist Alizée Freudenthal. Freudenthal photographed her friends in her apartment to create a narrative of her quotidian life. The photo-printed fabric’s realism feels utterly contemporary and fresh, yet somehow familiar.

Designer Richard Saja’s reinterpretation of the medium has a decidedly Boschian feel. Saja purchases yards of toile de Jouy and sews fantastical, colorful human- and animal-like creations over the sedate and romantic scenes, enlivening the fabric with a whimsical and bizarre perspective. Saja’s been tapped by the likes of Christian Lacroix and Opening Ceremony to lend his irreverent perspective to their fabric and sneakers, respectively.

Interior designer Sheila Bridges has always been drawn to toile, but when it came to her most intimate of projects—her home in Harlem—she couldn’t find one to suit her style. Often the response of a great decorator, she decided to create her own. Harlem Toile started as a wallpaper, then branched out into a fabric, tabletop collection, and bed linen. Bridges’s toile seeks to explore and “lampoon some of the stereotypes deeply woven into the African-American experience.”